I know and I'm sure you know that networking is important, but I didn't realise how important it was until a couple of weeks ago.

At the start of the year I made a choice to move away from what I perceived to be an in-secure job in an agile development back to my previous job in an ERP consultancy working with Dynamics NAV. Having resided myself to a career of working with Dynamics NAV, I deleted my LinkedIn account and stopped looking for work in the Ruby community.Fast forward six months and I have been paid off from the ERP consultancy due to budget constraints within the company and I have exhausted all leads in the west of Scotland for Dynamics NAV work. What to do now?

I had very few people in my network that I could turn to to ask about possible leads for freelance and permanent work.I fell back to Twitter for a couple of days to see if any of my followers were looking for a developer. It lead to one interview. The interview wasn't successful, but it was still a potential job and that's what having a good network is all about. Making sure that you are well connected to people that can help find you leads and opportunities. Even though I hadn't posted on Twitter for a while, people were still reaching out with suggestions.

I decided to create another LinkedIn account again to see if I cold improve on my search for a job. The last time I had a LinkedIn account I didn't use it to look for jobs or keep my profile updated with what I was working on. This time it will be different.Having spent the last couple of weeks looking for work I've started to see the benefits of using your professional network more regularly. In he last week alone I've had a number of messages from people I have previously worked with who have leads for potential jobs.

Don't neglect your professional network, it's important. Keep people updated with changes in your employment status and projects you are working on. You never know, it could lead to a great opportunity for you when you need it the most.